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Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Exciting News

It is my pleasure to participate in the gorgeous cover reveal of Elora Ramirez’s Somewhere Between Water and Sky!! Isn't it amazing?

Title:
Somewhere Between Water and Sky

Author: Elora
Ramirez

Release Date:
September 18th

Cover Artist:
Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations

About Somewhere
Between Water and Sky

I heard it said
once that every human is a story with skin.

If this is true,
paragraphs would be etched in the scars on my wrists.

Whole chapters
could be written about the way my heart pounds when I startle awake.

And every single
one of my tears could fill a book.

But stories, with
all their promise, only leave room for disappointment. I don’t have
room for that anymore. I left it all—the hope, the love, the
promise—back in my old life with the ghosts I’d rather forget:
Jude. Emma. Pacey.

Kevin.

This is how I
dare to move forward and to believe in a new beginning. I let go of
the old. I just grab the new and run. I don’t wait around anymore.
I can’t.

Waiting leaves
room for the voices.

Somewhere between
water and sky, I'll find a way to burn these voices to the ground.

If this is true,
paragraphs would be etched in the scars on my wrists.

Whole chapters
could be written about the way my heart pounds when I startle awake.

And every single
one of my tears could fill a book.

I watch the
people sitting around me on the bus. The single mother with two rowdy
toddlers, the older couple on vacation with cameras strapped to their
necks, the boy rapping beats under his breath and writing in a
journal—all of them breathe into this poetry of life.

Normally, I’d
want to know their stories. I’d wait for hints of who they were
inside, the poetic shifts that make us human. Now I just watch.

The boy rapping
pauses with his hand in mid air and thinks for a minute. Breaking
into a smile, he nods vigorously and lowers his hand to his paper. I
frown. I used to have a piece of that poetry inside. It’s just all
a little broken now. I don’t know how to fix the one thing that
used to put me back together. The poems still come; I just don’t
know what to do with them anymore. If I’m feeling particularly
brave, I’ll attempt to scratch them into a journal.

Usually, I just
write them with my finger on my jeans. No one needs to read them
anyway. Besides, I can’t hold on to them for very long. The silence
is on fire and the sentences and scenes that used to extinguish those
flames do nothing but fan it hotter and brighter. I’m a new person
here—no one knows anything about me. All of my journals are in
various trash cans around the city. I fill one up and then throw it
away, shedding the skin and finding someone new underneath every
single time.

This is how I
dare to move forward and believe in a new beginning. I let go of the
old. I just grab the new and run. I don’t wait around anymore. I
can’t.

Like clockwork

the words
disappear at dusk

empty cans
filled up

like dust.

Rapper boy looks
back up and catches me watching him and then offers a shy smile. My
fingers pause their lines and curl in to the protection of my hand. I
flip my lips upward into a quick grin and then look away before he
can strike up a conversation.

I don’t want to
know his story.

Stories, with
all of their promise, only leave room for disappointment. I don’t
have room for that anymore. I left it all—the hope, the love, the
promise—back in my old life with the ghosts I’d rather forget:
Jude. Emma. Pacey.

Kevin.

Something like
grief catches in my throat and a small burst of air escapes through
my parted lips.

I miss him. I
miss him and I can’t miss him. If I give into these feelings…this
emptiness…I shake my head and wipe the stray tear on my cheek.

This is
ridiculous.

Reaching into my
bag, I pull out my phone. One missed call shows itself on the screen
and I frown. No one has my number. I swipe the screen open and scroll
through until I notice UNKNOWN NUMBER in red font.

Red like
blood.

I shudder.

After the life
I’ve lived, I’m nothing if not over-dramatic. It’s whatever. I
feel I’ve earned it.

With a few more
quick swipes, I delete the notification and sigh the misgiving away.
There’s no voicemail, and so there’s nothing to worry about yet.

No harm, no foul.
No one knows your number. No one knows your number.

I’ve learned
different but I’m choosing another way of living. I repeat these
phrases in my head, tapping the rhythm of the words on my knee.

About the Author: Elora
Ramirez lives in Austin, Texas with her chef-husband. At the age of
four, she taught herself how to read and write, cutting her teeth on
books like Dr. Seuss and writing anywhere she could find the
space--including her Fisher Price kitchen set, the pages of picture
books and Highlights Magazine. Since then, she's grown to love the
way words feel as they swell within her bones. Writing holy and
broken is her calling, and pushing back the darkness and pursuing
beauty through story is her purpose. She embraces the power of story
and teaches women from all parts of the world how to embrace theirs.
She has a knack of calling things out , the truth and the detail, the
subversive threads that make a life a story. She loves hip-hop,
wishes she lived by the beach and cannot write without copious
amounts of coffee, chocolate, music, and her husband's lavender
liqueur.

I'm very excited to be able to participate in this cover reveal for Elora's new book! This is a sequel to her book Every Shattered Thing. If you have not read it you still have time before this new one comes out on September 18th.